lowland constituting the extreme southern extension of the West Siberian Plain. Most of the steppe lies in Russia, but its western part extends into Kazakhstan. Roughly triangular in shape, with its point to the south, it covers an area of approximately 39,000 square miles (100,000 square km). With a poor drainage pattern because of low relative relief and meagre rainfall, the steppe has numerous ...

...qarīḍ and rajaz, were added several that utilized the colloquial form of the Arabic language (the qūmā, for example, and the kān wa kān). But the two additional forms that have occasioned the most interest among scholars......

region on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, notable since 1947 as the site of the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered. Excavations (since 1949) at a site called Khirbet Qumrān (Arabic: “Qumrān Ruins”), less than a mile from the sea and north of the waterway Wadi Qumrān, have revealed the ruins of buildings, believed by some scholars to...

...were first discovered. Excavations (since 1949) at a site called Khirbet Qumrān (Arabic: “Qumrān Ruins”), less than a mile from the sea and north of the waterway Wadi Qumrān, have revealed the ruins of buildings, believed by some scholars to have been occupied by a community of Essenes, who have been posited as the owners of the Scrolls....

...forms to their literature. Poetry remained the primary genre until prose stories, short novels, and drama were introduced in the early 20th century, before the end of the tsarist era in 1917. Abay Ibrahim Kūnanbay-ulï (Kunanbayev) in the late 19th century laid the basis with his verse for the development of the modern Kazakh literary language and its poetry. (Aqmet)......

abandoned town in the United Nations (UN)-monitored demilitarized zone between Syria and Israel. It was an important regional hub and administrative centre in southwestern Syria until the Six-Day War of June 1967, when it was occupied by Israeli military forces. When the Israelis withdrew in 1974, they systematically strip...

...In the 1700s the basins of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya passed under the control of three Uzbek khanates claiming legitimacy in their descent from Genghis Khan. These were, from west to east, the Qungrāts based on Khiva in Khwārezm (1717–1920), the Mangits in Bukhara (1753–1920), and the Mings in Kokand (c. 1710–1876), in the upper valley of the Syr Darya.......

...East Side, West Side (1949) had the benefit of a great cast—Ava Gardner, James Mason, Barbara Stanwyck, and Van Heflin—but was not a success. Quo Vadis (1951), MGM’s $7 million epic about the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Nero, had actually been initiated in 1949 with John Huston directing, but LeRoy took over......

historical novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, published in Polish under its Latin title in 1896. The title means “where are you going?” and alludes to a New Testament verse (John 13:36). The popular novel was widely translated....

...Bernhardt and was imported by Zukor (who founded the independent Famous Players production company with its profits). In 1912 Enrico Guazzoni’s nine-reel Italian superspectacle Quo Vadis? (“Whither Are You Going?”) was road-shown in legitimate theatres across the country at a top admission price of one dollar, and the feature craze was on....

...set up under the Statute of Gloucester of 1278 the magnates were asked by what warrant they claimed rights of jurisdiction and other franchises. This created much argument, which was resolved in the Statute of Quo Warranto of 1290. By the Statute of Mortmain of 1279 it was provided that no more land was to be given to the church without royal license. The Statute of Quia Emptores of 1290 had th...

writing system used for the Vietnamese language. Quoc-ngu was devised in the mid 17th century by Portuguese missionaries who modified the Roman alphabet with accents and signs to suit the particular consonants, vowels, and tones of Vietnamese. It was further modified by a French missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes. At first used only in Vietnamese Christian commun...

...given a general philosophical formulation in the 16th century by Michel de Montaigne and his cousin Francisco Sanches. Montaigne, in Apology for Raimond Sebond, and Sanches, in Quod nihil scitur (“Why Nothing Can Be Known”), both written in 1576, explored the human epistemological situation and showed that knowledge claims in all areas were extremely......

...incorporated in 1811. It was named for Lübeck, Germany. Lubec has developed as a commercial centre for a resort and fishing area; sardines and locally farmed salmon are processed there. The Quoddy Head State Park (the easternmost point in the continental United States) has a lighthouse originally built in 1808 (rebuilt 1858). A bridge connects Lubec with Roosevelt Campobello......

musical composition in which several well-known melodies are combined, either simultaneously or, less frequently, sequentially, for humorous effect. Quodlibet can also refer to an amalgamation of different song texts in a vocal composition. While simultaneous combinations of two or more melodies go back to the 13th century (motets using, for example, a ...

in Western architecture, both the external angle or corner of a building and, more often, one of the stones used to form that angle. These cornerstones are both decorative and structural, since they usually differ in jointing, colour, texture, or size from the masonry of the adjoining walls....

game in which players toss rings at a stake, called the hob. A ring that encircles the hob scores two points for the thrower; a ring closer to the hob than an opponent’s scores one. The rings are usually made of iron and weigh about three pounds, but rope or rubber rings are also used. It has been said that the game was played in Roman-occupied Britain (1st–5th century), or it may have been develo...

any of the catlike Australian marsupials that make up the genus Dasyurus in the family Dasyuridae. All native cats are predators that hunt chiefly at night. Because they sometimes raid poultry yards, native cats have been persecuted and in some regions are extinct. Also contributing to their disappearance have been the destruction of their habitats and the introduction of such placental ma...

...1686–89 it was called Rochester. In 1722–23 it was divided into North Kingstown and South Kingstown. North Kingstown includes the villages of Allenton, Davisville, Hamilton, Lafayette, Quonset Point, Saunderstown, Slocum, and Wickford (the administrative centre)....

principal river of western Africa. With a length of 2,600 miles (4,200 km), it is the third longest river in Africa, after the Nile and the Congo. The Niger is believed to have been named by the Greeks. Along its course it is known by several names. These include the Joliba (Malinke: “great river”) in its upper course; the Mayo Balleo and th...

mechanism by which bacteria regulate gene expression in accordance with population density through the use of signal molecules. Quorum sensing allows bacteria populations to communicate and coordinate group behaviour and commonly is used by pathogens (disease-causing organisms) in disease and infection processes. Bacterial activity involving quorum sensing was...

in international trade, government-imposed limit on the quantity, or in exceptional cases the value, of the goods or services that may be exported or imported over a specified period of time. Quotas are more effective in restricting trade than tariffs, particularly if domestic demand for a commodity is not sensitive to increases in price. Because the effects of quotas cannot be...

...consists of a large population that is not homogeneous. This was the challenge faced by market and opinion researchers when they first started to conduct large-scale surveys. Their solution was the quota sample, which attempts to match the characteristics of the sample with those of the universe, thereby achieving a small replica of the universe. For example, if one knows, possibly on the basis...

Each member contributes a sum of money called a quota subscription. Quotas are reviewed every five years and are based on each country’s wealth and economic performance—the richer the country, the larger its quota. The quotas form a pool of loanable funds and determine how much money each member can borrow and how much voting power it will have. For example, the United States’......

...the first time the view that clarification of syntax is the main object of punctuation. By the end of the 17th century the various marks had received their modern names, and the exclamation mark, quotation marks, and the dash had been added to the system....

Lin Biao developed a simplified and dogmatized version of Mao’s thought—eventually published in the form of the “Little Red Book,” Quotations from Chairman Mao—to popularize Maoist ideology among the relatively uneducated military recruits. As the military forces under Lin increasingly showed that they could combine ideological purity with......

...In June President Wade announced that, effective in 2005, he would introduce legislation to provide public funding of political parties. On July 9 Madiambal Diagne, editor of the newspaper Le Quotidien, was arrested after having published an article about government corruption. In protest, on July 12 all of Senegal’s privately owned newspapers ceased publication, and private radio......

...antecedents. This characteristic changes drastically, however, as soon as division is introduced. Performing division (its symbol ÷, read “divided by”) leads to results, called quotients or fractions, which surprisingly include numbers of a new kind—namely, rationals—that are not integers. These, though arising from the combination of integers, patently......

the sacred scripture of Islam and, for all Muslims, the very word of God, revealed through the agency of the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. Although most modern Muslims know it as the Holy Qurʾān, many of them still refer to it as al-Qurʾān al-karīm or al-Qurʾān al...

the sacred scripture of Islam and, for all Muslims, the very word of God, revealed through the agency of the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. Although most modern Muslims know it as the Holy Qurʾān, many of them still refer to it as al-Qurʾān al-karīm or al-Qurʾān al...

His life’s labour began with the Qurʾān Commentary and was followed by the History of Prophets and Kings. Al-Ṭabarī’s History became so popular that the Sāmānid prince Manṣūr ibn Nūḥ had it translated into Persian (c. 963)....

...Africa in the 9th and 10th centuries and western Africa in the 11th. It introduced the Arabic script, and, because knowledge of the Qurʾān became an important religious requirement, Qurʾānic schools developed. These schools concentrated on the teaching and memorization of the Qurʾān; some were little more than gathering places beneath a tree where......

the ruling tribe of Mecca at the time of the birth of the Prophet Muḥammad. There were 10 main clans, the names of some of which gained great lustre through their members’ status in early Islām. These included Hāshim, the clan of the Prophet himself (see Hāshimite); Zuhra, that of his mother; and Taim and ʿAdī, the clans of the first and second caliphs, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar...

minṭaqah (province), western Al-Shamāliyyah (Northern) region, northwestern Saudi Arabia. It is bordered by the provinces of Al-Hudūd al-Shamāliyyah to the northeast, Al-Jawf to the east, Tabūk to the south, and Jordan to the north. Al-Qurayyāt fronts the Gulf of Aqaba to the west. The province is mostly upland plateau with rock and gravel ...

When it was discovered that members of the Jewish tribe Qurayẓah had been complicit with the enemy during the Battle of the Ditch, Muhammad turned against them. The Qurayẓah men were separated from the tribe’s women and children and ordered by the Muslim general Saʿd ibn Muʿādh to be put to death; the women and children were to be enslaved. This tragic episode cast......

...of murāqabah (“watching”) fills the Ṣūfī with either fear or joy according to the aspect of God revealed to him. (2) The ḥāl of qurb (“nearness”) is a state that enables the Ṣūfī to become unconscious of his own acts and to see God’s acts and bounties toward him. (3) The......

Descent is reckoned patrilineally, and married couples usually reside near the husband’s home. The Amhara practice three types of marriage: kal kidan, qurban, and damoz. Kal kidan (also called serat or semanya [“eighty”]) is marriage by civil contract. It is by far the most common form, though a great percentage of such unions end in......

Indian tabla player, widely acknowledged in his day as one of the finest in India. As a regular accompanist of Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar in the 1960s and ’70s, he was largely responsible for developing interest in the tabla among non-Indian audiences. He traced his lineage to the Punjab gharana...

...and the prime minister’s office vacant, it was the army that ensured a smooth transition to still another caretaker government. Senate chairman Wasim Sajjad assumed the office of president, and Moeen Qureshi, a former World Bank official living in New York City, agreed to act as interim prime minister....

city, southwestern Tajikistan. It lies in the Vakhsh River valley, 62 miles (100 km) south of Dushanbe. Qǔrghonteppa has existed since the 17th century. It is on the railway line between Dushanbe and Kulyab....

city, southwestern Tajikistan. It lies in the Vakhsh River valley, 62 miles (100 km) south of Dushanbe. Qǔrghonteppa has existed since the 17th century. It is on the railway line between Dushanbe and Kulyab....

ʾ, professional class of reciters of the text of the Muslim sacred scripture, the Qurʾān. In the early Islāmic community, Muḥammad’s divine revelations had often been memorized by his Companions (disciples), a practice derived from the pre-Islāmic tradition of preserving poetry orally. It became common for pious Muslims to memorize the Qurʾān in its entirety, even after it had been assembled in wr...

city, capital of Córdoba provincia (province), in the north-central section of the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Andalusia in southern Spain. It lies at the southern foot of the Morena Mountains and on the right (north) bank of the Guadalq...

...celestial map, which furnishes a remarkable connecting link between the classical representation of the constellations and the later Islamic forms, is painted in the dome of a bathhouse at Quṣayr ʿAmra, an Arab palace built in Jordan about 715 ce. The surviving fragments of the fresco show parts of 37 constellations and about 400 stars....

...hands of Jurhum, a people living on the central west coast recorded in Greco-Latin sources as Gorrhamites. But sometime about 500 ce (“five generations before the Prophet Muhammad”) Quṣayy ibn Kilāb, called al-Mujammiʿ (“The Unifier”), is credited with having brought together scattered groups of Bedouin and installed them in Mecca. They took over a......

...language (thereby contributing to the profundity of Arabic vocabulary), and the handbooks of religious teaching produced in eastern Arab and Persian areas (Sarrāj, Kalābādhī, Qushayrī, and, in Muslim India, al-Hujwīrī) are generally superior to those produced in western Muslim countries. Yet the greatest Islamic theosophist of all, Ibn......

...In these khuṭbahs, however, political considerations frequently overshadowed the religious and literary aspects. The quṣṣās (storytellers), who interpreted verses from the Qurʾān, attracted large audiences and may be regarded as the inventors of a popular religious......

...barley, vegetables, and other crops are grown in the date-palm understory. Much settlement in this region is in highly distinctive, fortified adobe villages known as ksour (Arabic: quṣūr, “castles”). Nomadic camel herding was once an important economic activity in the Saharan zone, but......

...and intricate and abundant decoration with arabesques and inspirational texts. Examples of early Pashtun architecture in Delhi include the Quwat-ul-Islam mosque; the Qutb Minar, which, with its surrounding monuments, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site; the tomb of Iltutmish; and the Alaʾi Gate. Later Pashtun styles are represented by the tombs of the Sayyid......

Egyptian writer who was one of the foremost figures in modern Sunni Islamic revivalism. He was from a family of impoverished rural notables. For most of his early life he was a schoolteacher. Originally an ardent secularist, he came, over time, to adopt many Islamist views. Following a brief period of studying in the United States (1948–50), he became convinced of the corruption of Western secular...

...and intricate and abundant decoration with arabesques and inspirational texts. Examples of early Pashtun architecture in Delhi include the Quwat-ul-Islam mosque; the Qutb Minar, which, with its surrounding monuments, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site; the tomb of Iltutmish; and the Alaʾi Gate. Later Pashtun styles are represented by the tombs of the Sayyid......

Egyptian writer who was one of the foremost figures in modern Sunni Islamic revivalism. He was from a family of impoverished rural notables. For most of his early life he was a schoolteacher. Originally an ardent secularist, he came, over time, to adopt many Islamist views. Following a brief period of studying in the United States (1948–50), he became convinced of the corruption of Western secular...

(1518–1687), Muslim rulers of the kingdom of Golconda in the southeastern Deccan of India, one of the five successor states of the Bahmanī kingdom. The founder was Qulī Quṭb Shah, a Turkish governor of the Bahmanī eastern region, which largely coincided with the preceding Hindu state of Warangal. Quṭb Shah declared his independence in 1518 a...

town, southern Lesotho. The surrounding area, which borders South Africa (southeast and west) and the Orange River (north), is predominantly agricultural (with subsistence farming of wheat, corn [maize], and sorghum) and pastoral. Livestock (sheep, cattle, and goats) raised in the area produce wool and mohair for export. Nearby tourist attractions include preserved dinosaur trac...

...their territories in Iran as far south as Isfahan and northward in the Caucasus to the borders of Shīrvān and Georgia. In 1191 the Seljuq sultan Toghrïl III defeated and subjugated Qutlugh Inanj (reigned 1191–95), the fourth Eldegüzid ruler. Qutlugh had to retreat to Azerbaijan, where the Eldegüzids held their position until 1225, when the......

Having angered the first Mamlūk sultan, Aybak, Baybars fled with other Mamlūk leaders to Syria and stayed there until 1260, when they were welcomed back to Egypt by the third sultan, al-Muẓaffar Sayf al-Dīn Quṭuz. He restored them to their place in the army and conferred a village upon Baybars....

...of Islāmic architecture to survive in the subcontinent date from the closing years of the 12th century; they are located at Delhi, the main seat of Muslim power throughout the centuries. The Qūwat-ul-Islām mosque (completed 1196), consisting of cloisters around a courtyard with the sanctuary to the west, was built from the remains of demolished temples. In 1198 an arched......

...ceased to exist, especially since the passing of the Ottoman Empire, although in the latter part of the 20th century many embassies in the Arab world still employed an interpreter-courier known as a kavass (Turkish kavas; Arabic qawwās), used largely for ceremonial purposes....

city, western Zhejiang sheng (province), China. Quzhou has been a natural transportation centre since ancient times, being situated on the upper stream of the Fuchun River—there known as the Changshan River—at its confluence with the Wuxi River. Natural routes lead westward into Jiangxi province, south...

The direct ancestor of the contemporary pipa is the quxiang (“curved-neck”) pipa, which traveled from Persia by way of the Silk Road and reached western China in the 4th century ad. It had a pear-shaped wooden body with two crescent-shaped sound holes, a curved neck, four strings, and four frets. In performance it was......

The direct ancestor of the contemporary pipa is the quxiang (“curved-neck”) pipa, which traveled from Persia by way of the Silk Road and reached western China in the 4th century ad. It had a pear-shaped wooden body with two crescent-shaped sound holes, a curved neck, four strings, and four frets. In performance it was......

...British Museum and discovered the site of the palace of Ashurnasirpal II. In 1931–32, together with M.E.L. (later Sir Max) Mallowan, Thompson for the first time dug a shaft from the top of the Quyunjik (Acropolis), 90 feet (30 metres) above the level of the plain, down through strata of accumulated debris of earlier cultures to virgin soil. It was then proved that more than four-fifths of......

city, western Zhejiang sheng (province), China. Quzhou has been a natural transportation centre since ancient times, being situated on the upper stream of the Fuchun River—there known as the Changshan River—at its confluence with the Wuxi River. Natural routes lead westward into Jiangxi province, south...

In 1992 Diller left Fox and purchased QVC, a home-shopping cable network. Two years later he was defeated in his attempt to buy his old employer, which had been renamed Paramount Communications. In the same year, QVC and CBS announced a merger, but it was quickly squelched by QVC investors. Diller then sold QVC and started on a series of acquisitions and mergers. In 1995 he bought Silver King......

former nonindependent Bantustan, Orange Free State, South Africa, designated for the southern Sotho (often called Basuto) people. Located in a section of the Drakensberg, Qwaqwa was a glen among mountains at elevations from 5,500 feet to more than 10,000 feet (1,675 m to more than 3,050 m). It was a headwaters area for several streams, including the upper Elan...

mountain range in Central Asia. A western spur of the Tien Shan (“Heavenly Mountains”) system, the range extends westward for approximately 230 miles (370 km) from the Chu River to the Talas River, just east of the city of Taraz, Kazakh. It rises to a height of 15,994 feet (4,875 metres) at West Alamedin Peak and forms part of the border between Kazak...

...industrialized areas, such as Qaraghandy province, because Soviet authorities never seriously made environmental protection a high priority. In the vicinity of the Aral Sea, and especially in Qyzylorda (Kzyl-Orda) and Aqtöbe provinces, Kazakhs suffer from the pollution and salinization of the sea. Its waters are contaminated with pesticides, especially DDT, and with chemical......

city, south-central Kazakhstan, on the Syr Darya (ancient Jaxartes River). Originally founded in the early 19th century as the Kokand fort of Ak-Mechet, it was renamed Perovsk after its capture by the Russians in 1853. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the name of Ak-Mechet was restored, but in 1925 the city was renamed Qyzylorda, when it...

desert in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It has an area of about 115,000 square miles (about 300,000 square km) and lies between the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya (rivers), southeast of the Aral Sea. It consists of a plain sloping down toward the northwest, with a number of isolated bare mountains rising to 3,025 feet (922 m) and several large enclosed basins. Precipitation, 4–8 inches (100–200 mm) annu...